Michael T. Lam, Ph.D.

Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University working with the NANOGrav Collaboration. Currently I work on noise budget analyses for the millisecond pulsars in the NANOGrav pulsar timing array. Our goal is the detection and characterization of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves from the stochastic gravitational wave background and from individual sources. Gravitational wave observations will complement our electromagnetic view of the Universe.

Current Work

I study the various contributions to noise in our timing models for our millisecond pulsars. Trying to characterize its types and strength is key if we want to mitigate it. I specifically look at instrinsic pulsar timing noise and errors caused by propagation through the interstellar medium.